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These days, I'm a senior online editor at Forbes. I was previously an editor at Above the Law, a legal blog, relying on the legal knowledge gained from two years working for corporate law firm Covington & Burling -- a Cliff's Notes version of law school.
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How Facebook Outsources Its Nudity Patrol

Facebook would like to be the Disneyland of the Internet — a happy place to go to have fun with your friends that’s safe, shiny and clean (more on that later). Thus there are rules: No nudity or pornography, no bullying, no hating, no violence… Facebook asks users to flag any images that violate those rules, and the site gets “millions of reports” from users every day, says a spokesperson. It reviews some of those reports in-house but also farms some of them out to third-party contractors.

Adrian Chen at Gawker did a fascinating interview with Amine Derkaoui, a former employee of a California-based outsourcing firm called oDesk that does this work for Facebook. Odesk hires its employees from around the world where wages are cheap; Derkaoiu says he was paid $1 per hour to screen Facebook’s illicit content. He provided Chen with a cheat sheet the firm uses for decisions about what kind of content to spike and what to let stay up:

When it comes to sex and nudity, Facebook is strictly PG-13, according to the guidelines. Obvious sexual activity, even clothed, is deleted, as are “naked ‘private parts’ including female nipple bulges and naked butt cracks.” But “male nipples are OK.” Foreplay is allowed, “even for same sex (man-man/woman-woman)” Even the gays can grope each other on Facebook.

This has caused controversy among Facebook’s breast-feeding set, as Facebook disallows any photos where nipples show.

Facebook is more lenient when it comes to violence. Gory pictures are allowed, as long somebody’s guts aren’t spilling out. “Crushed heads, limbs etc are OK as long as no insides are showing,” reads one guideline. “Deep flesh wounds are ok to show; excessive blood is ok to show.”

Drugs are a mixed bag. Pictures of marijuana are explicitly allowed, though images of other illegal drugs “not in the context of medical, academic or scientific study” are deleted. As long as it doesn’t appear you’re a dealer, you can post as many pictures of your stash as you want.

When I read Chen’s report, I started wondering how it is that Facebook farms out users’ private photos and videos for review without compromising users’ privacy. They may have uploaded them, unwisely, for their friends to see, but how comfortable would they be with strangers around the world reviewing it?

“We handle content when there are sensitive policy issues,” says Wolens. Examples include content that users have reported as “suicidal” or content that has been reported for copyright infringement.

But, as noted by Chen, many of the images reported as “pornographic” or “violent” wind up being outsourced. Wolens says that when the images are sent to outside contractors, they are not associated with a person’s account.

“We tailor it to give the least amount of information possible,” says Wolens, though they will include in the report generic information about the context of who flagged it. “If a user flagged content about themselves as harassing, that’s important context.”

Derkaoui says he was able to link content to users’ identities.

“We could see people’s identities while moderating,” he tells me by email. “We could see the reported content according to its nature (picture, comment, video..). The reported and the reporters’ names were shown in the tool too; we could also see all those who commented on the photo.”

Wolens says that part of the contract with outside firms is a requirement that any content they review stay within their own ecosystem. Still, generally, it’s probably a good idea not to upload your drug photos and sex videos to Facebook.

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